Don't let the cover fool you, modern quilters. Hands down, I believe this is the best resource book for machine quilting out there. You may never do trapunto or feathers, but even for your basic free motion stipple, this book will help.Diane Gaudynski is the machine quilting guru. Award winning, she has every authority to speak on this subject. And speak she does. She teaches and blogs, so you can find more from her all over the place.
Her book is full of exercises, tips, supplies, concepts and trouble shooting. Whenever I am having a problem with something, anything, in my quilting this book is the first thing I pick up. I almost always find the information I need to solve the problem. Likewise, this is an excellent inspiration for technique and free motion ideas.
The book covers set-up and basting, important factors in actually enjoying machine quilting. Yes, enjoying. When it goes smoothly, machine quilting is actually kind of exciting. You see your movements, your efforts literally changing the weight of the quilt in your hands. For me, that is a thrilling thing in the process of creating my quilts.
It does seem odd to me that there are some actual quilt projects at the back of the book. Yes, they show off the quilting, but it seems kind of irrelevant. I would have rather seen more examples of quilting techniques.
I strongly recommend that everyone keep this book in their library. It is worth it.
Thanks to Elle for introducing me to the book in the first place.
I am actually getting close to dipping my toes (still tentative) into the world of machine quilting...so I'll take all the advice I can get.
ReplyDeleteI agree! This is a great book! I just started FMQ after taking a two day class in November. They had a book to buy and then later I bought two more, all new. THEN I bought this book, used, great price and it has been the most helpful of any that I've yet purchased. Toni
ReplyDeleteHappy Day! I was mentioning you over on my blog today. Great minds and all that! Still a great book and I'll be rereading it soon as I await the arrival of my new sewing machine with bigger throat space and better MQing capapabilities. But it is mostly the operator and Diane is a great operator/teacher.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the review! I've checked it out from the library once... will have to do that again. Or buy my own copy. Also there is a podcast interview of Diane with Annie Smith who used to do (? I think she doesn't anymore) the Quilting Stash podcast.
ReplyDeleteThanks Cheryl, I'm going to need to get a copy of this one.
ReplyDeleteTanya
Nuff said! Amen!
ReplyDeleteI've never seen this book before, will have to keep my eye open for it!
ReplyDeleteI have had this book for years and it's a great book to reference too
ReplyDeleteThis book is great,They had a book to buy and then later I bought two more, all new. THEN I bought this book, used, great price and it has been the most helpful of any that I've yet purchased.
ReplyDeleteI am getting my hands on this book TODAY. Thanks for the suggestion.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip. I popped over to Diane's blog and already learnt a lot! Often the way with crafts - the important thing is the techniques not the style. Style is such a personal thing.
ReplyDeleteLove this book. After extensive research I found it and used it to make my first quilt about 4 years ago. I have used it many times since then to learn something new.
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